It's just another example of how the social Web mirrors the "real world," with all that's good and bad in it – not that hate sites weren't a presence on Web 1.0, nearly from the beginning. "The Internet has become both a social gathering place and a pulpit for the current generation of neo-Nazis," the […]

Get ready, parents of gamers. You may've already heard from a real authority at your house that today's the day for Halo fans – Tuesday is release day for Halo 3, and it's " almost guaranteed to be a blockbuster hit," the San Jose Mercury News reports, citing the view of many analysts that it's […]

Yes. By default*, for starters. But for some corporations (future employers of our kids, parents), social networking's already in the workplace, at the boss's behest or otherwise, and for some it's only a matter of time. "Thousands of employees of Shell Oil, Procter & Gamble, and General Electric have Facebook accounts. A Facebook network of […]

Social networking is happening pretty much wherever there's a Web, but the picture looks a little different in each country. Fresh comScore research found that 45% of Germany's 32.9 online people (14.8m) visited social-networking sites in July, the latest figure available. As for the where they socialize, the Top 10 sites were: MySpace (3.6 million), […]

A just-released study in Australia found that 90% of Australians have both cellphones and landline phones and 80% have Internet access, mostly broadband, Australian IT reports. According to the study, by Australian Communications and Media Authority, "parents believe broadband is important to aid their children's schooling, and mobile phones were a useful safety aid."

This is a story parents and teens should know about because it clearly illustrates how a student's mean comment in a public blog can literally become a federal case. US District Judge Mark Kravitz in Connecticut last week "ruled that Avery Doninger was outside her legal bounds when she used derogatory language on the Internet […]

This is something parents of young Xbox Live users and Internet gamers should be aware of – that kids and teens can experience considerable verbal and text abuse in online-gaming environments and that there are grownup gamers out there supporting them. For example, there's the GR8 Clan gaming group, founded four years ago by Terra […]

Increasingly, experts are saying that banning a teen's use of social networking is like banning (or more likely inhibiting) his or her social life. That's increasingly true with videogames too. "People tend to play with friends and family more often than they play by themselves, contrary to the stereotype of the anti-social gamer that stays […]

Business Week calls them "online country clubs," and they're becoming a trend: not just niche social-networking sites, but exclusive niche sites. "Membership in these networks, not unlike the exclusive country clubs where the rich and powerful hobnob, is carefully guarded," Business Week says. For example, at one such site, aSW (short for aSmallWorld), "only a […]

Eating disorder communities have been with us as long as there were eating disorders. When I was in high school, long before anyone but a handful of innovative researchers used the Internet, some of the cheerleaders would support each other while they binged and purged. The "community" was geographically limited. After the Web came along, […]